What's the Matter?: Reimagining More Responsive Human-Object Relationships

Humans and objects develop and maintain relationships directly through material interactions, transforming interpretations of the world. The sound of crunching leaves, the smell of home-cooked food, or reliving memories through photos. Each of these interactions informs relationships within the environment. How can these materials and their properties act to challenge human-centered narratives of design?

This pop-up exhibition and round-table seeks to contribute to this discourse, exploring how material agency shapes human perspective. Over the last three months, students have developed their own material interventions, culminating in a participatory event and exhibiting our differing perspectives on human-object relationships. Some examine how ecological matter has been shaped by human development. Several ask how materiality has changed through the development of digital systems. Others explore how culture and memory are formed through our material goods. Regardless of subject, medium, or ethos, we all seek to answer the question, “What’s the Matter?”

How can you participate? Join us in person or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.

Have questions? Send them to info.4@concordia.ca

Rebecca Acone 

Tender Circuits explores how light and sensor-based interactions can build relational and affective experiences between humans and machines. 

Natalia Arriola

Wwwind explores wind as a material - making the invisible, visible. Abundant, universal, light, strong - full of energy. What could happen if we captured it? 

Alexandre Beuzen

Immaterial affect addresses fading memories as digital decay through the observation of computational processes as materials.

Jennifer Brown

Packet Map visualizes and analyzes the spatial routes taken by data when using the internet. 

Hayako Henssen 

In Translation re-imagines family recipes through bio-plastic surfaces, preserving the cultures and memories embedded within. 

Haaziq Karim 

Object of Remembrance explores the materiality of ephemera as it relates to memory and emotional valence. 

Kamyar Karimi 

Of Sounding Voices is a taxonomy of protest field recordings investigating the materiality of sound. The project traces the relationship of chants, sirens, and ambient textures with architectures and shifting crowds.

Heige Kim

Through the Grain investigates rice's potential as surface and subject, revealing food as vital matter and multispecies kinship woven through everyday life. 

Divya Patel

Human Connecting Through Objects / Design is a collaborative memory quilt made from cherished fabrics and stories. The project transforms personal memories into a shared connection while exploring material value and the act of letting go. 

Thomas Rompré

Océane / This Bin Has Fish In It is a virtual independent interactive aquatic ecosystem. The project explores and critiques the abstraction, function, and depiction of ecosystems in interactive media.

Dailey Trainor

Ganawishkodawe / They Keep the Fire explores counter-cartographic visualization of Indigenous fire stewardship through transformations of cultural burn landscapes. 

Aurélie Tremblay-Marier

Working Pants is a garment that explores modularity and shape as a way to reduce clothing consumption. 

Cato Usher

Guilding is an interactive installation that invites audiences to create caustic art using objects that reflect, refract, or otherwise transform light and its environment. 

Frederick Walsh 

The Vibrations Around Us is an exploration of the materiality of sound through vibrations and its effects. The project focuses on the vibrations of human and non-human, urban and natural soundscapes. 

Cameron Wilson

Button Factory invites the audience to examine the artificiality and constructed nature of our digital environment through a whole lot of buttons.